I spent more than $35 this year on wildflower seeds from the New England Wildflower Society’s annual sale this winter. I expect to drop quite a few more bucks at native plant sales this spring. I am a sucker for wildflowers.

The theory is that my shady yard, overhung by trees, is more like a woodland than anything else, and therefore woodland wildflowers are most likely to do well.

Of course the overhanging trees are mulberries, Norway maples and the neighbors’ ailanthus, none of them exactly what you would hope for in a Midwestern woodland. I don’t think anybody planted any of them. They run right down the property line, and I expect all these notoriously invasive trees began, before my time, as sprouts that nobody felt responsible for weeding out because they were right by the fence.

You let a mulberry or an ailanthus sprout go for a few years and the next thing you know, you have a forest.

At the trees’ foot is a large bed of English ivy. I didn’t plant that either. I have a grudging respect for it, though, because it thrives, swarms and stays green (battered, but green) all winter, despite total neglect and even animosity. All I ever do to it is whack at it.

And the soil is not exactly as nature intended it. I have been slathering it with compost and leaving the leaves where they fall for 10 years and it’s better than it was, but I still occasionally dig up nails and drain tiles and other debris from the house that was torn down to make room for our apartment building in 1925.

Altogether, my yard is not really a very hospitable site for wildflowers, but I have never let that stop me. Every year I yank up the invading ivy from my few chosen spots and plant some of the spring blooms I so love in the Indiana woods. Most of them come from the native plant sale that the Friends of the Indiana Dunes holds each year at the Indiana Dunes State Park, where I regularly succumb to a very expensive wildflower delirium. Seeds represent a worsening of the malady.

I don’t know how many great white trillium plants I have poured into the spot where, in my fantasies, there is a carpet of white in earl May. Last year I had three blooms and was inordinately proud. I am told that finicky trillium may take years to germinate and bloom from seed, so my packet represents either A) a serious commitment or B) serious foolishness.

Wild columbine, with its red-and-yellow rocketships, outshoots every hybrid cultivar, as far as I’m concerned. But though I have planted it over and over and patrolled vigilantly to keep the ivy clear – and though some of the plants were thriving untended in an alley before I “rescued” them -- I can’t get them to reseed. Nor have I ever gotten trout lilies to take hold.

I have had some successes -- sharp-lobed hepatica, for example, although I have to intervene regularly to keep not only the ivy but the neighboring epimedium from eating it alive. I have the periwinkle blue kind. The bloodroot is hanging on. Virginia bluebells thrive. A few bits of wild ginger that I brought home from my mother’s garden with a leaf and a couple of roots apiece have developed the muscle to battle my ferns for space. Under their leaves they have a mysterious maroon flower in spring.

I have a patch of marsh marigolds that I don’t remember planting; I figure the seeds must have hitchhiked on something else. And there is one (1) mayapple every year. Never two, never none. One.

In my February fever, I think I thought buying wildflower seeds would actually be cheaper than buying plants. But that would have been if I weren’t also going to buy plants.

Do I really expect to be able to grow these plants from seed? Now that I am calmer, I think it unlikely. But I already wrote the check so I might as well try. After all, these are plants that have been reproducing in real woodlands for thousands of years. They may even be able to survive me.

Comments

I have two recommendations with respect to your intent to do more shopping for Native Plants. They are:

Backyards for Nature Fair on Sunday May 6 from 10 am to 2 pm
sponsored by the Schaumburg Community Garden Club and the Spring Valley Nature Center (worth the drive even if there were no sale!). Very knowledgeable and helpful volunteers! Check it out at

again, worth the drive. They have a knowledgeable and helpful staff. If they don't have the definitive answer to an obsure question, they will do an on site immediate web search for an answer. Much more motivated and helpful than one tax payer subsidized libary I have visited but don't continue to visit.

Hi!
My name is Kim & I would like to know if you know where I can purchase periwinkle herb. It is urgent for me to buy it a.s.a.p. due to a health crisis.
Any help that you can give would greatly be appreciated.

Best,
Kim

Posted by: Kim Acoff | Jul 20, 2007 2:24:14 PM

Kim, I beg you not to try to treat your problem with this poisonous plant but instead to consult a medical doctor. Periwinkle is Vinca minor, also called myrtle, a very common ground cover. All parts of the plant are toxic if ingested. It can cause symptoms ranging from diarrhea to heart problems. Please see a doctor instead. http://www.aragriculture.org/horticulture/ornamentals/toxic_plants.htm

Posted by: Beth Botts | Jul 20, 2007 9:49:53 PM

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